All Sons & Daughters – A History Of Poets And Saints

“Leslie just started going to everybody with the idea…and then it just started snowballing,” says Leonard. Soon the idea of exploring poets and saints became bigger than a new All Sons & Daughters album. Jamie George was already contemplating a teaching series on church history, as well as planning a trip to Europe to celebrate his daughter Ashton’s sixteenth birthday. “We should just go together!” suggested George as the project grew. And with that, the trip began to take shape. David and Leslie, their spouses, Jamie and his family, a film crew and others made plans to take the continent spanning adventure together.

“There were certain people we really wanted to go after…we knew we wanted to go to Assisi for sure, and there was C.S. Lewis stuff,” says Leonard. “It was just trying to figure out how to get from one point to the other. We [were] ending in Rome, so we just kind of went, alright, what’s the path from London down to Rome?” With a rough map of cities to visit, they started to research the places and people who’d lived there—well known saints and semi-obscure writers alike.

On the first day of the trip, Leslie recalls “rolling up to this small town of Olney on this double decker tour bus, kind of like, ‘Um, I hope we don’t get in trouble and I hope we find what we’re looking for.’ Because we literally did not know what we were looking for.” The journey through Olney led them to the story of William Cowper and John Newton, an unlikely friendship that led to one of the world’s most famous hymns, “Amazing Grace.”

As they made their way from London to Paris, Geneva, and eventually Rome, the stories came to life in fresh, new ways. “Being able to see things that are older than we can ever imagine seeing over here,” says Leonard, “to see it and put our hands on it just brought everything to life. I think that was the same life that we fought for when we started writing these songs…it gave us a richer language.”

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